Understated beauty on the new album by By Million Wires was a long time coming, but it was worth it.
For me, the joy of music reviewing is pressing play on a new release not knowing what to expect, the anticipation is intoxicating, especially if I know nothing about the band or indeed their music. Such is the case with today’s offering, by Polish natives By Million Wires. It is a 5-song-EP and is the first new music from the band in over 14 years! That’s quite a wait for fans. Was it worth the wait?
There’s a particular kind of emotional weather that By Million Wires seem intent on summoning, thick, electric, and just a little suffocating. Not Over doesn’t so much arrive as it seeps in, slowly saturating the room until you realise everything feels heavier, closer, more fragile than it did before.
The opening track drifts in on a bed of hazy textures, all gauze and ghost-light, before the percussion lands-soft, almost apologetic, but carrying an undercurrent of inevitability. It’s a statement of intent: this is not about impact in the traditional sense, but about accumulation. Weight builds in layers, in aftertaste.
What immediately stands out is the band’s relationship with space. Where earlier material flirted with density for its own sake, Not Over feels more deliberate, more restrained. Guitars shimmer rather than roar, their edges blurred into something aqueous. Even at its most intense, the record avoids collapse into noise, instead hovering in that liminal space between control and dissolution. It’s a difficult balance, but one they maintain with surprising poise.
Vocally, there’s a quiet desperation threading through the performance from new vocalist Mirek Skrok. The delivery rarely breaks into outright anguish; instead, it lingers in that more unsettling territory of someone trying very hard to remain composed. Lines trail off, phrases dissolve into reverb, and meaning becomes as much about absence as presence. It’s a technique that could easily feel affected, but here it lands with a kind of disarming sincerity.
Mid-release cuts deepen the atmosphere rather than disrupt it. There’s no obvious “single” moment, no cathartic release engineered for easy recall. Instead, the record functions as a continuous emotional gradient - each track shading into the next, shifting tone almost imperceptibly. This might frustrate listeners looking for clear peaks, but for those willing to sit with it, the reward is a fully realised mood-piece that reveals more with each pass.
Still, that restraint is also its defining character. This is an album that trusts in its own quiet intensity, that refuses the easy drama of loud/soft dynamics in favour of something more internal, more lingering. It doesn’t end so much as it fades, leaving behind a residue of feeling that’s difficult to articulate but hard to shake.
In that sense, Not Over lives up to its title, not as a statement, but as a condition. It lingers. It persists. And long after the final notes dissolve, it remains, unresolved, somewhere just beneath the surface. So yes, it was well worth the wait.
